For two or three weeks our autumn woods are draped in splendor, and dropping their ripened fruits for squirrels and birds and little boys and girls to find. Then comes a gale of wind and cold rains. Suddenly, the trees are bare, the birds are gone, the squirrels asleep in their cosy store-rooms. The baby leaves and branches and blossoms for next year are tucked up snugly in tiny brown buds, all over the trees. You can find them in early winter, just above the scaly marks left by the leaves that have fallen. Every one of them is a little prize package, rain-and-frost-proofed in spicy gums and fleecy blankets.
Isn't it wonderful that these tender babies, some no bigger than grains of wheat, will be safe and warm even when the ice is thick on the rivers and ponds? Winds that break off great limbs of trees and almost blow you off your feet, will merely rock these babies in their cradles. And under the blankets of leaves and snow, the fallen seeds will lie asleep, as snugly as Johnny Bear in his cave. The first warm days of spring they will wake up, yawn so wide that they will split their shells, stretch their leaf-arms up to the sun, and dig their root-toes into the soft earth.
